The HRC's Annual Report 2014, which was presented to Parliament on 17 March 2015, is now available to download.
Below are some of the highlights from what was a very productive year:
- In 2014 the HRC continued to provide critical support and retain our highly-skilled, experienced research workforce to deliver important health gains, drive innovation, and meet the needs of our unique population. The HRC supported 773 full-time equivalents. As many researchers work part-time on research contracts, this translates to 2,678 individuals.
- Our targeted career development awards continue to successfully nurture and retain emerging researchers – the next generation of research leaders, at a crucial time in their career path. In 2014 one-fifth of named investigators supported are emerging researchers (240, 17 per cent), including a total of 102 research fellows and 92 postgraduate students. Fifty-six per cent of former Emerging Researcher First Grant recipients are engaged on subsequent research projects.
- HRC-funded researchers maintain a high international profile, with an average citation of 14.5 per HRC-funded publication, which demonstrates that we are supporting the very best research – research that is widely and frequently cited internationally. This result also tells us that the researchers we fund are making very significant contributions to their field and the quality of their research is recognised internationally.
- In 2014, HRC-funded researchers were involved in 189 international collaborations, involving 28 different countries, with 203 positions on contracts held by international collaborators. This is an extremely encouraging indicator as this level of international collaboration is critical in ensuring effective knowledge transfer and uptake and in increasing New Zealand’s access to world-wide medical advances.